Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Education

200 Students Admit Cheating After Professor's Online Rant 693

Posted by samzenpus from the people-get-what-they-deserve dept.
Over 200 University of Central Florida students admitted to cheating on a midterm exam after their professor figured out at least a third of his class had cheated. In a lecture posted on YouTube, Professor Richard Quinn told the students that he had done a statistical analysis of the grades and was using other methods to identify the cheats, but instead of turning the list over to the university authorities he offered the following deal: "I don't want to have to explain to your parents why you didn't graduate, so I went to the Dean and I made a deal. The deal is you can either wait it out and hope that we don't identify you, or you can identify yourself to your lab instructor and you can complete the rest of the course and the grade you get in the course is the grade you earned in the course."
Image

The World's Smallest Legible Font 280

Posted by samzenpus from the because-he-can dept.
hasanabbas1987 writes "From the article: 'Well 'technically' they aren't the smallest fonts in the world as if they were you wouldn't be able to read even a single letter, but, you should be able to read the entire paragraph in the picture given above... we did. A Computer science professor called Ken Perlin designed these tiny fonts and you can fit 500 reasonable words in a resolution of 320 x 240 space. There are at the moment the smallest legible fonts in the world.'"

Comment Re:cheaper/safer CAT scans? (Score 1) 122

by incy_webb (#33819370) Attached to: Visible Light 'X-Ray' Sees Through Solid Objects
but what about for thinner body parts, like hands or feet? A quick scanner for those might still be useful for replacing the need for xrays in some situations. It might be possible to have the light sent to include positioning information (for example, send a string instead of a single pulse) and correlate where it was seen with where it was sent from.

Comment cheaper/safer CAT sacans? (Score 2, Interesting) 122

by incy_webb (#33817852) Attached to: Visible Light 'X-Ray' Sees Through Solid Objects
I've had this idea for a while now that low-heat, very bright LEDs are available as light sources: 1. take an existing CAT scanner: Xray source, detector, mounting system (with the rotating arm) and image processing software. 2. replace the Xray source with a bank of LEDs 3. replace the Xray detector (a scintillation screen? whatever it is) with a CCD 4. start scanning Obviously there's a whole bunch of experimentation needed to calibrate diffusion due to different types of tissue/bone/marshmallow but the software should be mostly unchanged, the mechanical mounting system would be mostly unchanged, and we'd be replacing a radioactive source with a low-power, low-heat light. Is anybody working on this? I've asked a couple of professor at a biomedical engineering department but much silence ensued. The ability to use off-the-shelf components seems like a big plus to me... There would also be a need to check at what intensity cold light is detrimental to cells (and other small issues like that)
Science

Zombie Ants and Killer Fungus 125

Posted by samzenpus from the level-1-random-encounter dept.
nibbles2004 writes "An article in the Guardian newspaper shows how parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control ants they infect, ultimately leading the ant to its death. The fungus controls the ant's movements to a suitable leaf and causes the ant to grip onto the leaf's central stem, allowing the fungus to spore, which will allow more ants to become infected."

Slashdot Top Deals

Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about. -- Philippe Schnoebelen

Close